Antares
by Rain Sky
Summary: New Head Boy James Potter's marks are down because he skips class. He flies poorly because he skips meals. With a little financial help, new Head Girl Lily Evans tries to set the broken ace right again. Challenge. One-shot. OiSM-compliant.


**A/N**: This was written for a challenge. The challenge was to write a non-romantic date and to involve ice cream. This scene fits right into my OiSM fanon. However, I have not gotten that far in OiSM, so if you are confused, I suggest heading to the "Bellatrix Lestrange: The Dark Lord's Most Faithful" forum to read the "Universes for the Black Sisters" thread.

_Late September 1977_

It was an unseasonably warm day, early in the afternoon with some white clouds here and there decorating the blue sky. Ambient sounds of rustling leaves and the occasional cracking twig came from the forest, but aside from a single tawny owl flying toward an addressee somewhere inside the castle, it was very still.

A young man with unruly hair the off-black colour of ebony laid motionless in the grass, the way he had been since first light. He was near-sighted, but he'd cast his glasses aside to stare blankly at the blurry sky above. Save for watering eyes, he hadn't moved even an hour ago when the midday sun hung directly overhead.

Suddenly the great oaken doors to the castle opened, and a solitary young woman with dark red hair tied into a messy ponytail appeared. She strode over to the boy on the grass, pulling off thick gloves as she did so.

"Potter, we need to talk."

James Potter didn't blink. "Go away, Evans."

"I can't," Lily Evans countered. "I'm Head Girl. It's my job to investigate when a stellar student's academics suddenly take a nosedive, even if the student happens to be Head Boy."

"I'll turn in my badge. Didn't want it to begin with. Should have gone to a prefect. Just leave me alone." Again, a tired, detached voice.

Lily ignored him and sat down on the grass beside him, very conscious of the fact that she smelled of rotting wood. She'd rushed to finish her Potions assignment and left the classroom as soon as she'd done so; else, Professor Slughorn could have neutralised the odour, as he would be doing for her fellow classmates.

"Did Remus put you up to this?"

"Remus is worried about you. And so are Narcissa and Regulus."

"They wouldn't worry about me. They hate me. And I deserve it."

The Head Girl sighed. "Maybe you do. But what do you think would have happened it you had done things differently? I'm not well-versed in wizard politics, but from what I gather, your family stood no chance against theirs."

"I didn't even fight for her. My best mate trusted me with the love of his life, and I'd promised I would cherish her," James croaked, his voice hoarse and raspy. "I just walked away. What sort of Gryffindor am I?"

"A realist who regrets having had to make a difficult decision?" Lily supplied. "Morton's fork, Potter. You had two options; both hurt." She pointed a finger, the nail of which was sloppily painted metallic gold, toward the lake just south of the castle. "Black Lake, Potter! Named for Antares Black! No other family has a member with a namesake landmark at Hogwarts."

"You don't get it. You don't know." James pushed himself up stiffly and reached for his glasses. "It wasn't love at first sight or anything like that, but I always liked her since I first saw her. Not Cissa, not Annie. Always Bel." He stared at the mountains beyond the lake. "Everyone else in our year is enamoured with Cissa. Some preferred Annie, but no one noticed Bel. Why me? When I became friends with Siri, I deferred to him because… I liked her, I really did, but he _loved_ her."

Just out of reach of James's blurry peripheral vision, Lily smiled slightly. Loyalty. Putting the whole above the self. Last year, she would never have guessed that James Potter had so many redeeming qualities.

"In third year – or was it fourth year – Siri said they were told their relationship was wrong, unnatural. I didn't pursue her then, either. I didn't want to do that to Sirius. I tried to see other girls; you would know." He rolled over onto his belly so that he could face Lily, who had, reasonably enough, rejected his invitations more times than could be counted. "It wasn't until last year when Siri suggested it."

"Sirius Black knew his best mate was worthy of the girl he loved," Lily remarked matter-of-factly, in a voice surprisingly gentle. While Lily hadn't forgotten the various times James and Sirius hexed Severus Snape unprovoked, or the many times the former two and Andromeda Black hexed Muggle-borns, also unprovoked, she also recalled James going the extra mile to make little Bellatrix Black smile.

"He wanted her to be _happy_. I failed both of them."

Lily sighed. "Potter, what do you think would have happened if you had fought for Bellatrix Black?"

"I didn't even try."

She pursed her lips, growing weary of his mantra. "You may or may not have made the right choice, but the dilemma was messy and forced upon you. _It was out of your control_. You're flawed, Potter. Not a failure." Quietly, she added, "I'm sorry."

The Head Girl got up to leave, hoping that letting him mull things over would make it easier to return him to his senses later, then stopped. "Oh, rubbish, there's one more thing." Facing the castle, Lily shouted, "_Expecto patronum_!" A silvery doe erupted from her wand and galloped through the air toward Gryffindor Tower.

After the two watched the doe disappear in silence, Lily turned around with an expression of extreme satisfaction on her face. "You've skipped two meals already; this stops now. Hope you're in the mood for butter pecan gelato, Potter, because Florean Fortescue is making it fresh in our common room."

"No thanks, not hungry," came the young man's automatic reply.

At this, Lily rolled her eyes. "Do you even know how many girls, prefects even, I've caught over the last two years entering Gryffindor Tower with butter pecan cakes, butter pecan cookies, butter pecan _anything_ pilfered from the kitchens? Mary Macdonald, Kalila Patil of Ravenclaw, Emmeline Vance of Hufflepuff, Cynthia Greengrass of Slytherin, a couple of fourth-years just last week…"

"Cynthia is my _cousin_," James interrupted, indignant enough to jump to his feet, blood rushing to his head. "She just wanted me to look over Transfiguration essay."

"Beside the point. The point is, you're notoriously _always_ in the mood for butter pecan. And it's a really warm day. And you really should eat _something_."

There was another moment of silence. Then, James asked incredulously. "_You_ arranged for Florean Fortescue to _close shop for the day_ and churn ice cream in the Gryffindor common room?"

Lily bit her lower lip lightly. "Well, a couple of us prefects pooled our monthly frivolities allowance to pay for it."

He continued to stare with a raised eyebrow, not buying the explanation for a second. Lily Evans' parents' were utterly middle-class; James may have had self-centered tendencies, but he paid reasonable attention to the people around him, especially pretty, intelligent girls.

"Okay, Narcissa and Regulus paid for most of it," Lily admitted. "They made me promise not to tell. But, see here, if they could forgive you for it, don't you think you ought to forgive yourself?"

Right on cue, a horned owl approached and flew three circles above Lily's head before flying off in the direction of the Owlery.

"Evans, what – "

"_Accio gelato_!" Lily cried, eyes cast upward, visualizing the ice cream on the smallest table in the common room. Sure enough, an ice cream cone loaded with two scoops of butter pecan gelato flew towards them. Lily slowed the Summoning Charm and caught it neatly. The air around the cone had a silvery aura from a temporary Cooling Charm, which wore off exactly six seconds later. She offered it to James. "Remus said that you might need immediate temptation. There's plenty more in the common room. Eat as much as you like. Just… go to Charms afterward."

After another pause, James accepted the ice cream. He eyed it thoughtfully.

"Is something wrong?"

"Well, it's just…" He grinned. "Now that you're jumping through hoops to bring me butter pecan, shall I take that as a sign of your romantic interest in me?"

Lily stood in shock for a moment before rolling her eyes and walking off, muttering, "Insufferable prat." Five meters away, she stopped again.

"Stop skiving off class, Potter!" She reminded in the best imitation of her mother she could muster. "Sev will never let you live it down if you fail your NEWTs and have to stay an extra year."

**A/N**: In James and Narcissa's first year, Narcissa's father is looking to expand her maternal grandfather's company into the food industry. As part of his plan, he poached James's mother into being his partner. Known for high quality, it would not be long before Florean Fortescue started to rely on their company to supply his store. Therefore, the implication is that James's mother, who pressured him into not opposing the Black's, also played a part in enticing Florean Fortescue into this private catering event in her concern for her son.

According to canon, James Potter was not a prefect, but was eventually made Head Boy. I believed that something very drastic had to have happened to humble him greatly, an experience in which he had no power and realised how his bullying victims must have felt. In my fanon, that event is the moment he walked away and left Bellatrix to the arranged marriage that _Andromeda_ had asked for, then run out on (leaving Bellatrix to fill in as a spare). Sirius was hurt by this, but when he ran away from his family over the matter, James asked him to stay with him, and they mended their friendship. A lot of the people involved in the matter did not make heroic choices, but the only true villain was Narcissa's mother, who refused to dissolve the betrothal even when the Lestrange's offered it.


End file.
